What are you reading in general?

[stonemaybe]

Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Travellers Wife. It's taken me since Christmas to pick this one up, but I was only 8 pages in before I was hooked!

[Tulizar]

Just finished Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom. I almost gave up on it a couple of times. My brain really wasn't in the mood for multiple hundred+ word sentences, but once I start a book I can't stop. In the end it was definitely worth reading.

Now reading Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. So far so good. Never read anything by Stephenson, but I've heard good things about his stuff.

[Avatar]

Snow Crash is excellent. Only thing by him I've read, but have read it several times.

--A

[Avatar]

Just started The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnson. Novel set in the early days of Newfoundland.

--A

[StevieG]

Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Travellers Wife. It's taken me since Christmas to pick this one up, but I was only 8 pages in before I was hooked!

I'm a bit late on the scene (don't come into this thread much ) - I found this a fascinating read!

[Krazy Kat]

Started reading
Isaac Asimov - The Collapsing Universe:The Story of Black Holes.

Looking forward to how he answers such questions as: does the existence of black holes raise the possibility of matter moving faster than the speed of light? and, does matter drawn into a black hole reappear as anti-matter as a sort of mirror-image of the universe as we know it?

This should be a great read from the old maestro.

[stonemaybe]

Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Travellers Wife. It's taken me since Christmas to pick this one up, but I was only 8 pages in before I was hooked!

I'm a bit late on the scene (don't come into this thread much ) - I found this a fascinating read!

So did I! I loved it! It is now on my very small list of perfectly thought out time-travel stories (it joins a list of one - Tim Power's Anubis Gates)

[Lord Mhoram]

Recently I've been reading a lot of Saul Bellow and Henry James.

[Tulizar]

Speaking of Henry James, I recently finished The Aspern Papers. The Turning of the Screw is next.

I'm about half into William Gibson's Spook Country.

[I'm Murrin]

At long last finished reading Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire, a brilliant, complex, multi-layered work which I picked up because of the heavy praise it's received from author Jeff VanderMeer in many of his recommendation lists.

Pale Fire is the poet John Shade's 999-line poem in heroic couplets which is heavily autobiographical, and full of literary references, wordplay, and beautiful and interesting all on its own.

Surrouding that, the Foreword and Commentary on the poem by its editor, Charles Kinbote, John Shade's colleague, neighbour and admirer, those same notes containing another story of Charles the Beloved, deposed King of Zembla, and his escape into exile. It emerges that Kinbote - who you realise is in fact King Charles himself, his names another wordplay - had spent the months leading to the poem's completion (and John Shade's unfortunate death on the day of its completion) telling this story to the poet under the firm conviction that Shade was creating a poem based upon it, and despite his disappointment at discovering it was not his story, he still spends much of his commentary attempting to show connections between his tale and the words of the poem.

And then there is another level to the whole affair, derived mainly in subtext and allusion: the people surrounding Kinbote, including John Shade's wife Sybil and the members of the college faculty, see him as a madman, and Zembla an insane fantasy. The man who killed John Shade might not be a political assassin from Zembla named Gradus, but an escapee from a local insane asylum named Jack Grey. Kinbote himself, in the turmoil surrounding the poet's murder, has managed to obtain the manuscript and rights to publish the poem from Shade's grieving widow, and taken it and himself into hiding, where he refuses contact from Sybil or the collaboration of experts from the university while he edits the poem and composes his notes.


It's all exactly the type of metafictional interweaved storytelling that I enjoy, and I can see how much this novel influenced VanderMeer in some of my favourite works by him (The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris, in which the personal life of the historian intrudes upon the text in footnotes; and King Squid, an elaborate pamphlet created by a probable madman and with a fictional bibliography that includes in its notes the author's tragic past; to give two easy examples).

A truly great work of literature.

[aliantha]

Wow, it's been awhile since anyone's posted in here....

Somebody mentioned Audrey Niffenegger at the top of the page. I finished her latest, Her Fearful Symmetry, the other night. It didn't pull me in initially but it ended up being a satisfying read. I could see a couple of the plot twists coming from about a mile away, but there were some surprises for me. All in all, a decent book.

Now I'm reading The Magic Circle of Rudolf II by Peter Marshall. It's a history/biography of Rudolf II (imagine that!), Holy Roman Emperor, who lived in Prague in the late 1500s. The author says our Rudolf was bipolar (the result of Habsburg inbreeding), but his madness encouraged him to bring to his court an unparalleled collection of art and artists, scientists and alchemists, and astronomers and astrologers. Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler are among the famous people who hung out in Prague during Rudolf's reign. I rarely read history or biography, but I'm finding this one fun so far.

[I'm Murrin]

Today I read Asterios Polyp, a graphic novel by David Mazzucchelli. I picked it up last week after spotting it in Travelling Man, purely because it looked interesting.

Turned out to be great. One of the most entertaining books I've read in quite a while. The story, themes, and art all blend together perfectly, it really sucked me in.

The art tells as much of the story as the words do - not just what is shown, but how it is drawn. In a lot of ways, it encourages you to pay attention more to what you see than what is being said.

It also packs one hell of a (visual) punchline. I turned the page and was immediately laughing harder than I have in a long time.

[stonemaybe]

Re-reading Roddy Doyle's Oh, Play That Thing in anticipation of the third in the series, The Dead Republic.

It's shown me how much my sense of anticipation affects my enjoyment of a book. The first in the series, A Star Called Henry, is one of my favourite books. I couldn't wait to read O,PTT and then when I did, I hated it! Now I've picked it up again, reluctantly, and am really enjoying it on the second read.

[Orlion]

I'm finally getting around to reading Pillars of the Earth after being sidetracked by Simmons, Erikson, Donaldson, Jordan, and various science fiction short stories

[sgt.null]

Alan Moore's Black Dossier

re-reading it to see if i can grasp it better this time.

[Krazy Kat]

THE DUES MACHINE -Pierre Ouellette

About half way through this novel and am not sure yet if this one has been written by a superb writer or a techno mumbo-jumbo merchant. It has echoes of the Parallax View meets Tron with a smattering of the Matrix as AI reaches TI (true intelligence), becoming an urban Jurrasic Park.
I want to stop reading this book and delve into something technical in computering because I can't quite latch onto the subtext, but the last chapter has just stepped up a gear.

[SerScot]

Orlion,

I'm finally getting around to reading Pillars of the Earth after being sidetracked by Simmons, Erikson, Donaldson, Jordan, and various science fiction short stories

I was disappointed by POTE. I thought the idea of watching people involved in the construction of a ME Cathedral would be really interesting. But, it was too much, and not enough at the same time. I was really disappointed in the moustache twirling villan who was the "Villan" throughout the entire book. He was evil because he was evil and liked doing bad things that he knew were bad. That's an incredibly poor character.

[Fist and Faith]

Today I read Asterios Polyp, a graphic novel by David Mazzucchelli.

I love his art in Daredevil and Batman. Never heard of this, though. I hope I remember to look for it next time I'm in the comic store.

[Orlion]

Orlion,

I'm finally getting around to reading Pillars of the Earth after being sidetracked by Simmons, Erikson, Donaldson, Jordan, and various science fiction short stories

I was disappointed by POTE. I thought the idea of watching people involved in the construction of a ME Cathedral would be really interesting. But, it was too much, and not enough at the same time. I was really disappointed in the moustache twirling villan who was the "Villan" throughout the entire book. He was evil because he was evil and liked doing bad things that he knew were bad. That's an incredibly poor character.

Yeah, I hear what you're saying...it's an enjoyable peace of fluff with some interesting historic notes... but it's not something I'll keep in my library...and from I hear about the sequel, I don't think I'll bother with it.

[stonemaybe]

The third in the series, Roddy Doyle's The Dead Republic was very good.

BUT, just finished The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Wow! Great book!